Microsoft’s AI beats Ms. Pac-Man - TechCrunch

As with so many things in the world, the key to cracking Ms. Pac-Man is team work and a bit of positive reinforcement. That… and access to funding from Microsoft and 150-plus artificial intelligence agents — as Maluuba can now attest.

Last month, the Canadian deep learning company (a subsidiary of Microsoft as of January) became the first team of AI programmers to beat the 36-year-old classic.

It was a fairly anticlimactic defeat. The number hit 999,990, before the odometer flipped back over to zero. But it was an impressive victory nonetheless, marking the first time anyone — human or machine — has achieved the feat. It’s been a white whale for the AI community for a while now.

Google’s DeepMind was able to beat nearly 50 Atari games back in 2015, but the complexity of Ms. Pac-Man,...